


Years, and Countless Ages

by umiyuki



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M, Gen, Pale Romance, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-02
Updated: 2011-09-02
Packaged: 2017-10-23 08:44:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/248412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/umiyuki/pseuds/umiyuki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“She said we’ll forget,” says the girl, tracing her fingers over the boy’s palm as if she could memorize every line, as if she already has.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Years, and Countless Ages

_We forget the ephemeral world  
Our memories melt into dreams  
Time flows on, and all that remains  
Are the things we cannot see_  
"We Forget" from the musical _Mozart!_ by Mahatma Gandhi

 _Even should all my memories disappear  
When I am reborn, I will search for you_  
"Monster" by Arashi, Nobel Poet Laureates

 

A boy sits with a girl half his size on a precipice at the end of the world. She has her head resting on his shoulder, her small hands wrapped around one of his big ones.

“She said we’ll forget,” says the girl, tracing her fingers over the boy’s palm as if she could memorize every line, as if she already has. “That we won’t remember anything about our lives the way they are now.” She lifts her head and looks up at him with green tears streaming from eyes that are still too big for her young face. “Does that mean I’ll forget you, too? That you’ll forget me?”

The boy raises one hand, gentle as he can, to brush her tears away with a careful motion of his thumb. “I could never forget you,” he says, but his voice breaks on his doubts and he feels his own eyes welling over. “You are as much a part of me as my own body, the other half of my soul. How could I ever forget you?"

She smiles faintly and reaches up to take his face in her hands, and pulls him down to touch their foreheads together. "I know you," she says. "I would know you anywhere."

"And I you," replies the boy, resting his hands on her skinny shoulders. "We'll meet again when we're reborn, I know we will."

She takes a deep breath and leans back, taking in the sight of his face like it's the last time she'll ever see him and she wants to remember every last detail. "You promise we'll find each other?"

"Yes," he says, looking back and doing the same. "I promise."

She throws her arms around him and hugs him as tightly as she can. "I'll miss you," she sobs.

He returns her embrace cautiously, wrapping his thick arms around her tiny body with utmost care. "I'll miss you too," he says. "But we won't be alone. So long as we both live, we'll never be alone."

~

"So," says the Marquise, flexing the fingers of the gleaming robotic arm you have just finished crafting for her, "with all your blubbering, I have to wonder. Do you regret it?"

You look up at her through your dark lenses, see the disdain in her expression. She wants you to say yes, to say that saving the life of that girl whose eyes are forever burned into your mind was not worth the cost. To confirm for her that actions that do not benefit oneself are pointless.

"Never," you say. "Not for one moment."

She frowns. "I don't get it."

"That you even have to ask such a question," you reply, "shows that you could never possibly understand."

Even you do not understand, not entirely. Why would a blueblood, employed in the noble service of the Subjugglators, betray his betters in order to save a greenblooded heretic? Nothing about it made sense. But the fact of the matter was that you could not do it.

You could not kill the girl.

It was her eyes that stopped you, when you’d already loosed one arrow on her leader, her love, and turned your bow toward her. You looked into her eyes and for a moment you felt something, remembered something, like you knew this wild-haired girl better than you knew yourself, like she was a part of you that had been lost and forgotten until that moment. She looked up at you with green tears streaming down her cheeks, her arms covered in that abominable red blood, and you knew her. You had never even spoken to her, never seen her before this night, but you knew her, knew those wide yellow eyes like your own reflection.

You lowered your bow and told her to run. She stared at you for a moment, the same way you were staring at her, and then she ran, holding the blood-soaked leggings of her dead love to her chest. It was the last time you would ever see her.

But those eyes, those enormous yellow eyes that overflowed with pale green tears, you would see every time you closed your own, and the image of the girl who you couldn't quite remember would stay with you every moment of those long sweeps in exile.

Your misery was not caused by regret over what you'd done. Given the chance to change your actions, you wouldn't, not for anything. The pain was in not being able to remember her, and in knowing that you would never be able to find her again and ask "Why do I know you?"

You wonder where she is now. If she's in some cave, just like you, tormented by her inability to remember why she knows you. You wish you could find her. You wish you even had a way to let her know that you are alive, that you are here, that she is not alone. So long as you both live, you'll never be alone.

You think you might have already told her that.


End file.
